


Domestic Disturbance

by pocky_slash



Category: Captain America (Movies), X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Background Slash, Crossover Pairings, During Canon, F/M, Married Couple, POV Female Character, Phone Calls & Telephones, Spies & Secret Agents
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-13
Updated: 2014-04-13
Packaged: 2018-01-19 06:47:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,025
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1459864
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pocky_slash/pseuds/pocky_slash
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <em>"My wife kicked me out."</em>
</p><p>Only half of that sentence is a lie, although after the shit Nick's been pulling this week, Moira can't say she doesn't feel the urge to do some kicking.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Domestic Disturbance

**Author's Note:**

  * For [metonymy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/metonymy/gifts).



> Welcome to four thousand words of my super niche crossover pairing that only like, four people care about. I give zero fucks. This was great fun to write and I adore this dumb little crossover ship. I think I did okay with the timeline of the movie--I imagine funerals weren't a high priority in the immediate aftermath of the fall of S.H.I.E.L.D., so.
> 
> Thanks to **heyjupiter** for beta reading and to **metonymy** for letting me babble at her in the car and after the movie yesterday. This is for her--she's had a crappy week and deserves nice things ♥

Moira is peering skeptically into the dishwasher and poking the innards with her non-broken hand when the phone rings.

It takes her a moment to identify the sound, even though she's been waiting for the call. It's not her cellphone. It's not even the landline they hardly ever use. It's the second phone line they had installed back in the nineties for their old dial-up modem. It takes her so long to put together the origin of the noise and find the phone she almost expects the caller to hang up, but when she finally finds it, an electronic voice lets her know she has a collect call.

"Will you accept the charges from," it says and then, "Joseph Kinross," her husband says.

"Yes," she says through gritted teeth. There's a pause, and then the call connects. "Hi honey."

"Don't be angry, babe," Nick says, "but I might be in trouble."

"I know," Moira says, wandering back to the kitchen. "You're using the trouble code name. If you hadn't been using the trouble code name, I still would have known because I saw the news. I think the whole world knows you're in trouble, asshole."

"It made the news?" Nick says, and Moira asks the god the hasn't believed in since she was twelve to grant her the strength not to murder her husband before whoever is out to get him gets a chance.

"Yes, Nicholas, when you take down half the Beltway in a highspeed chase, it makes the news," she says. She leans against the counter next to the dishwasher. "You couldn't lead them to somewhere more deserted to have your firefight? You couldn't, I don't know, have escaped on foot? You literally drove your damn car through a bunch of civilian vehicles. Our insurance premium is going to go through the roof."

"I thought S.H.I.E.L.D. handled our insurance," Nick says.

"They do," Moira allows, "but that's not the point. The point is, you're probably riddled with bullet holes and I don't even want to know what else and you're calling me collect on the only non-bugged phone line in the house, using the code name, so just fucking tell me what's going on already and stop with the fucking pretense."

Nick blows out a long breath that may be a laugh.

"You got a mouth on you, woman," he says. Then, "It's bad."

"Well," she says, "I figured that much. You're calling collect on a goddamn landline."

"I can't be sure--I can't trust anything. I'm on a payphone. I've gotta go as analog as I can, and--things might be tricky in the next few days. If anything happens--wait for Maria to contact you before you jump to any conclusions."

"I don't like the sound of that," Moira sys. She pinches the bridge of her nose.

"Yeah, well, I don't either," Nick says.

"Be prepared for me to shout a lot when I see you again," Moira says. "Like, a lot a lot, because aside from your joyride through downtown, whatever stupid shit you're up to that Maria is bailing you out of, and the reverse charges on this phone call, whatever you did to the dishwasher last night fried it and I'm not fucking doing dishes one-handed."

She can feel emotion beginning to well up in her throat. She loves Maria Hill like a sister or maybe a daughter, but in situations like this, Maria acting as a go-between for Nick and Moira means trouble is brewing, the kind that's going to send Nick underground or scuttling off to the far corners of the world for longer than she'd like. The low-tech contact is making her think it's more the former than the latter, and after spending a week and a half on medical leave from the CIA for a shoot-out gone wrong, it's not the news she wanted to hear today.

Her arm, broken in two places, aches along with her heart. She swallows the lump in her throat and listens to Nick's breath rattle in his chest on the other side of the phone line.

"Sorry, babe," he says. "Call Sears?"

"You're such an asshole," she says. "Don't get yourself killed, Nick."

"Might have to," he says, thoughtfully, and Moira doesn't know whether to scream or cry or just slam the phone repeatedly into the counter the way she can't slam his head repeatedly into the counter. "Maria will contact you when she can. Til then, I'm gonna lay low with the only person I can trust."

"And who's that?" Moira asks.

"The only good man I know," he says. "Love you, gumdrop."

"Love you too, asshole," Moira says. "I suppose it's pointless to ask you to be careful."

"Call Sears," Nick says without answering her. "Be careful with your arm. I'll see you soon, babe."

The call disconnects and Moira's left listening to the dial tone and standing in the kitchen, trying to catch her breath.

They've been married twenty-six years and together twenty-eight. She'd hoped this would eventually get easier, but she's still surprised every time she wakes up in the hospital with Nick angry-borderline-hysterical at her bedside or she finds herself pacing a S.H.I.E.L.D. infirmary swearing a blue streak and cursing Nick's name while waiting for him to wake up.

She allows herself one moment to imagine the world where they do something safe, like raise llamas. Only one moment, though--anything more than that and she'll begin to realize how utterly boring that life would be for both of them.

"Fuck your fucking life, Nicholas Joseph Fury," she says to the empty kitchen and kicks the dishwasher door for emphasis.

She closes her eyes and counts to ten, then straightens her shoulders and goes to find her cellphone and call Sears to fix the goddamn dishwasher.

***

She didn't expect Nick to come home, but she still has trouble sleeping and won't admit until after midnight that there's a part of her waiting for him. She sleeps poorly when she does get into bed, unable to get comfortable on her back with her arm propped up. She feels like she's hardly slept at all when the doorbell wakes her at 9am.

She doesn't bother dressing--in her youth, she strove to present herself as immaculate at all times. She's pushing fifty-five now and could give two shits about what anyone thinks at nine am while she's on medical leave. She answers the door in her bathrobe and is greeted by a young man delivering flowers. She thanks him and tips him and brings the flowers inside. She pulls the card off of them, then goes right out into the garage and throws the flowers and vase in the trash. She can live with S.H.I.E.L.D. bugging her house. She's not going to let anything additional walk inside disguised as a pretty bouquet.

The card on the flowers makes her want to go back to bed.

_Don't believe everything you hear. Joseph Kinross is moving. He'll invite you to the housewarming once he knows where. -MH_

"What's next?" she asks the empty room. "Carrier pigeon? Fucking S.H.I.E.L.D."

She hopes they're listening and goes upstairs to take a long, hot shower.

It's interrupted by a phone call from S.H.I.E.L.D., who regrets to inform her that her husband suffered a fatal gunshot wound blah blah blah blah. It washes over her, distant and sterile, and the grief she pours over the phone is easy to fake as she thinks, heart racing, that this better be part of Nick's harebrained plan, or else she'll--

Well. It had better be a part of Nick's stupidass plan, or else.

She gets back in the shower where no one can tell she's crying tears of angry frustration, and then gets out and crawls into bed where, if anyone can hear her, she assumes they'll think the tears have more to do with grief than her sore arm, the worry rolling around in her rib cage, and her lack of clean forks. The dishwasher repairman is coming at noon, which gives her two hours to wallow before she has to put her game face back on.

"Fuck you, Nicholas Joseph Fury," she says again, this time to the empty pillow next to her.

***

Day seven of playing at grieving widow, six days since she last saw Nick ("Hey babe, matching slings." "I hate you so much."), and she answers the door in her bathrobe again. She has to admit that the upside to pretending to be devastated and depressed is never changing out of her pajamas and pretending it's grief and not laziness. She pauses before she opens the door to smear some eyeliner beneath her eyes to mimic the effects of sleeplessness and schools her expression into one of grief. She's sniffling when she pulls the door open.

"Hello, ma'am," says the young black man standing on her stoop. She's never seen him before, and while something about him screams military, she doesn't think he was with S.H.I.E.L.D.

"I'm sorry," she says. "Who are you?"

"Carrier pigeon," he says, and tosses her a burner phone. "Pal of Joe's. I'm supposed to give you that."

"Fuck him so hard," she says, shaking her head and turning the phone over in her hand.

"Pretty sure that's your department," the man says. On her glare, he adds a deferential, "Ma'am," as if that makes things better.

It kind of does.

There's one number in the contact list, and she waves Carrier Pigeon inside, through the house, and out onto the back porch before she hits send.

It rings three times, and then, "Hey, gumdrop."

"Hey yourself," she says. "Your funeral is tomorrow."

"Did you pick out a nice tombstone?" he asks.

"The cheapest stone money could buy," she says. "God knows when I'm going to see those S.H.I.E.L.D. death benefits now. You couldn't have waited until I got the check to blow those buildings up?"

"Sorry, babe, next time I'll take your champagne and caviar lifestyle into account before stopping the terrorists from assassinating a million people," he says.

"Damn straight," she says. "I'm guessing you didn't send Carrier Pigeon to ask about your tombstone."

"Nah, I sent him to ask you on a date," Nick says. "You, me, the scummy back alleys of Europe, some new tech Maria's gonna get us from Stark."

"You sure know how to charm a girl," Moira says. "I have some conditions."

"When do you not? Meet me day after tomorrow at my grave. Bring any off-the-grid covers you have and any of mine that S.H.I.E.L.D. doesn't know about."

"I swear to god, Nicholas, if you fucking claw out of the dirt when I show up, I will not laugh, I will shoot you in the head and leave you there so everyone thinks you really are a zombie," she says.

Behind her, Carrier Pigeon snorts. She likes him.

"That was one time and it was damn funny," Nick says.

"You're technically dead, so I'm technically single," she says. "Keep this up and you can fuck off to Europe on your own and I'll go marry Captain America."

Carrier Pigeon makes another noise, this one a little choked. She turns to scrutinize him as Nick says, "I think you'd be infringing on Carrier Pigeon's territory a little with that one."

"Really?" she says. "Aw, how sweet. Good choice, Carrier Pigeon."

"Uh," Carrier Pigeon says.

"I could tell you his name or his codename, but I'm honestly enjoying this," Nick says. "Anyway."

"Right," Moira says, turning to leave Carrier Pigeon alone with his blush. "Day after tomorrow, bring some passports, then we're gonna have a long talk about what comes next."

"Sounds about right," Nick says. "Love you."

"Love you too, you idiot," she says, and ends the call. She turns the phone over in her hand for a moment, her mind already whirring through the details. It's the perfect time to slip away. She can put her resignation in at the CIA and chalk it up to grief, tell everyone she's going to visit her cousin in Glasgow for a while, maybe even use her real passport to get there before she switches to an alias to do whatever bullshit Nick needs done throughout Europe. With S.H.I.E.L.D. and thus most of the world's prying eyes in shambles, there's a good chance no one will bother to check her story, see where she's going, or even care all that much. She has no doubt that a new agency will slip into the power vacuum to take S.H.I.E.L.D.'s place, or even that S.H.I.E.L.D. itself will be rebuilt from the ashes, hopefully without the evil Nazis at the core, but for now, for maybe the first time since the CIA started keeping tabs on her for possible recruitment, it's entirely possible no one is looking at her. Nick must think so too, or else he never would have sent Carrier Pigeon to the house with a cellphone, even if it is a burner.

It's equal parts liberating and scary. She doesn't know what it says about her that she's gotten so used to being bugged that she feels slightly insecure without it. 

That might just be loneliness talking. Dammit, but she misses her husband.

"Thanks, Carrier Pigeon," she says, turning back to him and handing him the phone.

"No problem, ma'am," he says. "And, uh, it's Sam. Sam Wilson."

"I like Carrier Pigeon," she says. "You're young and cute and thirty years ago I'd be taking you upstairs to my bedroom for entirely different reasons, but now I'm gonna take you up there to pack a bag for my husband."

"Yes, ma'am," he says, and holds the back door open for her.

"So, Captain America, huh?" she asks.

"Uh," Carrier Pigeon says again, "Maybe I should wait outside?"

"I'm an old lady and my husband has been dead for seven days," she says. "Humor me."

"Yes ma'am," Carrier Pigeon says, sounding only slightly pained.

Oh yeah, she likes him. Seven days a frustrated widow, and things are finally starting to look up.

***

The funeral is a chore she would have skipped if she could. At one point, she weighs the pros and cons of faking a hysterical faint, but there are too many mourners who knew her in the eighties and nineties when "womanly hysteria" was her go-to escape from tight situations on cases. In the end, she sticks it out with big dark glasses to hide her eyes in between bouts of fake tears and a song she makes up, the lyrics of which consist solely of "Fuck you, Nick Fury" over and over again.

The day after the funeral, she wakes up, throws out all the perishable food in the fridge and freezer, gets dressed, dons her black trench coat and big dark glasses, and heads out to the cemetery. Nick's grave is still heaped in flowers, and Steve Rogers is standing in front of it, staring down at the words carved into its face. He really is a fine specimen of the male form. Carrier Pigeon is a lucky son of a bitch.

"I'm sorry," Steve says when he sees her, stepping out of the way of Nick's grave. "I didn't mean to--hog the grave."

She prods the dirt with her toe, relatively positive that Nick isn't going to spring out the way he did in that graveyard in Belarus.

"No matter," Moira says. "I'm just here for a rendezvous. I know as well as you do that slab of stone isn't worth the outlandish amount of money I paid for it."

Steve tilts his head to the side and studies her for a moment.

"Mrs. Fury?" he says.

"Senior Supervisor MacTaggert, actually, but yes, I'm Nick's wife," she says. "It's a pleasure to meet you, Captain Rogers." She takes off her sunglasses and offers him her hand. They shake over Nick's grave, which is just a little bit funny.

"Did he tell you to meet him here too?" Steve asks.

"He did," she says. "He has a pretty fucked up sense of humor. Despite that, though, apparently it would have been 'inappropriate' for me to put 'Fucking Awful Husband' on his fake tombstone."

"I can't imagine why," Steve says, and she decides she likes him, too. Nick always did have a good sense for people, which is why this whole S.H.I.E.L.D.-Hydra thing has made her so uncomfortable. She imagines he's spent the entire length of his fake death kicking himself over it as well.

She sees Carrier Pigeon lurking on the footpath and nods towards him.

"I'll leave you to Carrier Pigeon," she says, and Steve frowns, then looks in Carrier Pigeon's direction, and then frowns more. He's adorable. "Nice to meet you, Captain. Take good care of the country while we're gone."

"Gone?" Steve asks, but Moira just waves at him and retreats into the trees as Carrier Pigeon goes over to join him. Nick will want to talk to him before they take off, she imagines, and she'd rather not have Carrier Pigeon and Captain America witness their reunion, given that she still doesn't know if she's going to smack him or jump him. Life with Nick Fury has always been full of surprises that way.

She spots Natasha immediately, sitting on a low hanging tree branch near the edge of the cemetery, and detours away from the footpath to stand below her, head tilted back.

"Hi, Nat," she says. "I saw you on CSPAN. You were great."

"Thanks," Natasha says. "I'm sure that's not the last time I'll be taking the heat for your supposedly dead husband."

"You're not the only one who's pissed at him," Moira says. "I'm glad he felt like he could trust Steve Rogers. I'm less glad he felt like he couldn't trust me."

"You're not alone in that," Natasha says. "Are you going with him?"

"Yup," Moira says. "Rooting out bad guys and kicking ass all across Europe--it'll be like a second honeymoon. Not much different from our first, actually."

Natasha smiles. Moira can never tell whether or not Natasha's smiles are real, but since she's rather sure the only people who can are her husband and Clint Barton, she doesn't take it as a slight on her skills.

"I'll miss you," Natasha says. "With you gone and Maria at Stark, it's gonna be a real sausage fest around here."

"I'm sure this won't be the last we see of each other," Moira says. "Take care of yourself and take care of Clint and...all the rest of the old gang."

"Will do," Natasha says. "Clint's been in deep cover for a month. He should get back next week. That'll be a fun conversation."

"I bet," Moira says. Her neck is starting to hurt from looking up.

"Take care of Nick," Natasha says. "He's a fucking asshole."

"Don't I know it," Moira says. 

"And speak of the devil," Natasha says. Moira turns to see Nick approaching them, sans-eyepatch and his overkill leather uniform.

"Hey, gumdrop," he says.

"Hi, fuckhead," Moira says, and Nat jumps down from the tree behind them, silent as ever. 

"I'm gonna go see the boys," she says. "I expect I'll see you both before we go our separate ways."

"I'll be over in a second," Nick says. "I thought maybe Wilson and Rogers would be more likely to join me if I let Moira get a few swings in first."

"I think you'll need all the help you can get if you want to recruit Rogers," Nat says. She pulls a thick folder with a Russian cover out of her jacket. "Special delivery for Cap, and I'm pretty sure Falcon's gonna go where Cap goes."

"I think you're right about that," Nick says.

"Falcon?" Moira says. "That's Carrier Pigeon's codename? Goddammit, Nicholas, your jokes are terrible."

"You love my jokes," Nick says, and steps closer, settling his hands at her waist.

"That's my cue," Nat says. "See you later."

Moira doesn't hear her leave, but she's never heard Natasha make a single movement in the entire length of their acquaintance, so that's nothing new. She doesn't look away from Nick, pushing his sunglasses up to the top of his head so she can look him in the eyes. It's been a long time since he took that eyepatch off anywhere but the shower or in bed.

"I'm so fucking pissed at you," she says. "So fucking pissed."

"I know," Nick says. "You should be. But I beat the bad guys." He leans over and kisses the corner of her mouth. "And I'm taking you to Europe." He kisses the other corner. "And I'm very handsome."

She sighs into the kiss he presses against her mouth and then kisses him back, wrapping her good arm around his neck. She means it to be quick, but it's been over a week since their lives were anything approaching normal and between her injury and the world falling to pieces around Nick, she's missed him. 

A lot.

When she finally pulls away, Nick looks dazed.

"Missed you too, gumdrop," he says.

"This is what we're going to do," Moira tells him. "You're going to go attempt to recruit the Captain and Carrier Pigeon. When they turn you down, we're going to fly out to somewhere warm and sunny to research, while you recuperate from turning all your internal organs into jelly and breaking all your bones. Once I'm confident that you won't keel over if someone kicks you the wrong way, we'll make a list and a plan and we'll see about taking out the rest of the Hydra cells. How does that sound?"

"Sounds like you're sick of my bullshit and ready to take over," Nick says.

"Well, you bungled your thing up pretty hard, so it's time for someone else to step up," Moira says.

"Babe," Nick says, "It's not that I didn't trust you. It's that you were the first place they'd go to look for me, and once shit started going down, there was no time."

Moira knows that, intellectually, but that doesn't mean that she's not still hurt. And pissed off.

"I know," she says. "That's why I haven't punched you in the face. But I'm allowed to still be pissed."

"You are," Nick allows. He kisses her again, first on the mouth, then on the edge of her jaw. "And I'm allowed to try and make it up to you, right?"

"Mmhm," Moira says. "That's why we're flying out in the morning and spending the evening in a hotel, having the kind of sex not recommended for people in their mid-fifties with half a dozen broken bones between them."

"I always appreciate a challenge," Nick says, and they share one more kiss before Nick steps away and smooths out his clothes, then slides his sunglasses back over his eyes. "I'll be right back. I'm going to go have a word with Rogers and Wilson."

"I'll wait in the car," Moira says. "The faster you get done, the faster you get to see what I'm wearing under my trenchcoat."

"What are you wearing under your trenchcoat?" Nick asks, raising his sunglasses again to scrutinize her.

"The better question might be what am I _not_ wearing," Moira says. Her lips curl into a smile and Nick shakes his head, the same dazed, glazed expression on his face.

"Fuck me," he says to himself.

"That's what I've been saying all week, babe," Moira says. "Go on. Finish up so I can take out my aggression the old fashioned way."

"Anything for you, gumdrop," Nick says, and gives her one last look before he replaces his sunglasses and jogs towards the footpath. Moira watches him go, then turns to head back to her car.


End file.
